I've been working with Windows Azure and Amazon Web Services EC2 for a good many months now (almost getting to the years range) and I've seen something over and over that seems troubling.

With AWS & Linux I commonly get instance startup times with EC2 around the 1-3 minute range.

With AWS & Windows OS on an EC2 instance it often takes 10-20 minutes.

With Windows Azure Web or Service Role I often get anywhere from 6-30 minutes waiting for a role to startup. I assume of course this involves booting up a windows instance somewhere in the fabric.

I know there has always been tons of FUD about windows vs. Linux, but I'd really like to know why it is that Windows 08 or 03 boots so much slower in the cloud than Linux. Any specific technical information regarding this would be greatly appreciated! Thanks.